BCCI Officials Surprised as CoA Pulls Up Secretary for Bhutan Trip

New Delhi: The Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) have pulled up acting secretary Amitabh Choudhary for travelling to Bhutan without informing the CoA. The committee has also asked Choudhary to explain undertaking 32 days of foreign travel in barely five and a half months of the current calendar in addition to the 110 days of travel inside the country.

The CoA in a scathing letter, in possession of CricketNext, has asked the secretary to provide an explanation on the disparity of his travel as compared to the 69 days that the treasurer has travelled and the 32 days that the acting president has travelled inside the country.

This apart, the committee has asked Choudhary to explain the reason for his visit to Bhutan when it has come to the fore that the purpose of the visit was essentially to survey the availability of cricketing equipment, cricket grounds, suitability of soil/ clay available for preparation of pitches, etc.

The CoA wrote: “All these functions are technical in nature and could well have been done only by the curator and the AGM Cricket Operations. The need for your presence and indeed the presence of your Executive Assistant on this visit is not apparent.”

Reacting to the whole situation, a senior BCCI official said that this was a scenario that was completely unwanted. “It is sad that the CoA has very rapidly deteriorated their position to claw at these petty non-issues ever since Amitabh’s view deviated with those of the CoA on some matters of policy and administration. He was the CoA’s blue-eyed boy till they thought he was signing on the dotted lines and did not have a mind of his own. What you see now is the BCCI version of an IAS vs IPS battle,” he told CricketNext.

“These issues are nothing but a smokescreen to take the attention away from the SGM of the BCCI tomorrow and it is interesting to note that even the departure conference of the Indian team has been planned in a manner to clash with the BCCI SGM.”

The letter further questions the reason behind keeping it in the dark in regards to the Champions Trophy in 2021 being replaced by an additional World T20.

“The Committee of Administrators has also not interfered with your travel for ICC and ACC meetings. This is despite the fact that you never briefed the Committee of Administrators in advance of the agenda items proposed to be discussed in these meetings or took its mandate for the discussions or even bothered to keep the Committee of Administrators updated on what transpired in these meetings. One important development that the Committee of Administrators were completely kept in the dark was the replacement of the Champions Trophy 2021 with an additional ICC World T20 event,” it read.

The CoA further said that it only refused to approve his travel to Sri Lanka during the Nidahas Trophy and the upcoming trip of England as it found no value addition to the BCCI with these visits.

“The Committee of Administrators has approved all your foreign travel over the last 18 months excepting the visit to Sri Lanka for the Nidahas Trophy and now the proposed travel to England for the T20 matches. The reservations over both these proposed travels was merely because the Committee of Administrators did not see any value addition to BCCI in these visits,” it said.

The CoA has asked the acting secretary to provide clarification to the aforementioned issues at the earliest and in any case before July 4. The Supreme Court is set to hear the BCCI matter on July 5.